Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Despite knowing that the Rockies had pulled off a win over the Reds, the Dodgers seemed to play rather cavalierly late in this game. George Sherrill escaped a jam in the eighth with men at first and second, and a ball hit to third baseman Ronnie Belliard, who calmly picked it up and walked over to get the force at third by a hair.

Somehow, Ramon Troncoso picked up this lackadaisical vibe, and entered in the ninth to promptly airmail an easy comebacker wide right to James Loney, allowing Gerardo Parra to reach second with none out. Sacrifice bunt over to third forced the Dodgers to load 'em up with one out, but the gambit failed when Troncoso walked in the winning run, in pathetic fashion, to give the Snakes that ever-exciting walk-off walk win. After considering how bulletproof our bullpen has been, it was disturbing to see Troncoso shatter so easily, but hopefully this is just an aberration. A blip, if you will.

Overlooked in this game will be Manny Ramirez' and James Loney's back-to-back jacks in the fourth to give the Dodgers a 3-2 lead; less overlooked however will be the fact that those same two batters had back-to-back Ks in the eighth to strand two on with one out (had we scored, Troncoso probably wouldn't have had to pitch tonight at all). The Dodgers take two of three from the Diamondbacks, but with the Rockies on a six-game win streak, we've actually lost ground in the division.

NL West lead erodes to 2.5 games as the Dodgers take a day off to stew on this one, as well as the fact that Randy Wolf is probably scratched from the weekend series in San Francisco. Magic number, of course, goes nowhere. Rockies get a chance to pick off another half-game tomorrow vs. the Reds while we idle. I need a beer.

Isn't the lead really 3 1/2 because we hold the tie-breaker over the rox?

Anyways, who really cares if we win the division? The playoffs are all that matters and we have a 7 game playoff cushion. Furcal, loney and manny are starting to look better at the plate. What is really going to be interesting is that when we get pushed and we are in must win situations we always respond. I would consider this weekend one of those so I expect 2-3 in halloween town. The only thing that worries me is that the giants are pretty much out of the race and they do tend to fuck us over In Those situations.

Yeah that sucks, just when a few slumping players start to come out of it, kemp takes a nose dive. And Martin, well ive already given up on him as far as offense goes. I try to just look at the positives that he is an excellent defensive catcher.

we still play the pirates and nats 10 times and they are both 1-9 in their last ten, hopefully both teams have just packed up for the rest of the year and we should win alot of those. Also, the rockies still have a losing record against the division so lets hope that continues.

if somebody has access to the Elias database, I would like to see if a hunch of mine is a good one

It seems like when we have the day off and the team(s) chasing us are playing, they win more than they lose and gain ground on us. If we are playing and they have off, we lose more often than we win and lose the half game. We don't seem to catch a break or take advantage of the opportunity. It's just a feeling and probably not a very good one